


foolproofed

by ladyeggplant



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - BA Test Kitchen, Alternate Universe - Chefs, M/M, am i channeling all of my weird feelings about brad from bon appétit into this fic, maybe so...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeggplant/pseuds/ladyeggplant
Summary: “I’m not tempering the chocolate.”“Barz,” Tito says, “You have to.”
Relationships: Mathew Barzal/Anthony Beauvillier
Comments: 41
Kudos: 333





	foolproofed

**Author's Note:**

> many many liberties were taken here, including (but not limited to): moving the real life test kitchen's location, baking, fishing, ages, patrick swayze movies, and (probably) jordan eberle's spelling capabilities
> 
> no liberties were taken in regards to how ugly the MTA is

“I’m not tempering the chocolate.”

“Barz,” Tito says, “You have to.”

“No.” Mat shakes his head, arms waving. “No. Absolutely fucking not.”

He knows everyone is watching them. It’s well into the afternoon on day two of shooting, and Mat hasn’t taken his lunch break yet, so all he’s had to eat today is half a Butterfinger and probably too much coffee. He hasn’t seen Tito since Saturday, off filming with a crew up in the Hudson Valley for a video on hard ciders, but instead of a _hey Barzy, how’s it hanging?_ Tito just made a b-line for the chocolate.

Safe to say, Mat is just Not in the Mood.

“Uh,” Ebs cuts in from behind the camera. “Maybe don’t swear? We’re supposed to be family friendly.”

Mat, in a moment of pure chaotic defiance, scowls at the camera and flips it off with both hands. 

“Okay, let’s just…” Ebs sighs, rubbing at his face. “Take a break.”

His station’s exploded over the past 24 hours into a monument of failure—really, they’re supposed to put everything away at the end of the day, keep the stations open and clean for whoever needs to use them. It keeps the crisp white and chrome of the test kitchen, bright and pristine with the west facing wall of windows that looks out over Dumbo’s waterfront, presentable for the camera. But during his gourmet videos Mat has license to pretty much do whatever he wants—comes with the territory when your content rakes in an average of five million views per video. Case and point, there are four different bowls of chocolate that range from milk, dark, and semisweet combo that Mat doesn’t think is entirely edible, half smeared across the marble counter and the front of Mat’s apron. There are peanuts. So. Many. Peanuts. No matter where Mat steps, they crunch beneath his feet, mocking him. There’s a legitimate possibility that they’re conspiring against him.

“I hear them talking to each other,” Mat says against the rim of his mug, hollow. _“Whispering.”_

“Okay.” Tito grabs the cup from Mat’s hands, pulling it away. “That’s enough coffee for you.”

Mat rubs at his face with both hands. “I can’t do this. Fucking Butterfingers—who comes up with this shit?”

“You did,” Tito reminds him. Tito’s really the only one who calls him out on his shit when he gets like this; most people just like to stand back and watch Mat spiral, partly because it makes for better content, but mostly because once he gets going there’s no way to really stop him. “You wrote it on the whiteboard and drew stars around it. You took a vote and when Zeeker said he wanted Junior Mints you had him thrown out of the boardroom for contempt of court.”

“Yeah, but that was Friday Mat,” Mat says. “Friday Mat was brimming with unbridled optimism and ingenuity. Now I’m just Tuesday Mat, and the only thing I’m brimming with is acid reflux.”

Tito’s mouth slants, trying for something sympathetic and failing as his eyes shine with borderline manic glee. Mat flings himself forward onto the corner of the counter, slumping boneless against the marble.

“My own hubris,” he groans. “I flew too goddamn close to the sun, and now I’m paying the price.”

“It’s candy, being made for people who will never even taste it,” Tito says. “And it’s not like anyone actually watches your videos for the content anyway.”

Mat picks his head up just enough to squint at him, and yes, okay, he’s seen the comments. They would be kind of hard to miss, ranging from _u can toast my nuts zaddy_ to the less coherent _nngnnngggG HANDSs,_ and everything in between. They had to disable commenting on the Laffy Taffy video for like a week while they figured out how to blacklist certain words and made poor, poor Devon sort through all of the flagged comments. For the record, though, there is a large portion of their audience that watches because they’re genuinely interested in the baking process. They’re just...the silent majority.

“Barz,” Tito says, patting Mat’s shoulder. “You need food. Real food.”

Mat sags forward again, grunting. He knows Tito’s right, but the idea of going outside right now needles at every last one of his nerve endings. Brooklyn’s cool or whatever, but it’s a drain on every one of the human senses, like his molecules have been set to vibrate, everything too bright, too loud, too constant. He looks at Tito, still summer tan with his flannel rolled up to his elbows, and Mat can practically smell crisp apples and fresh cut grass rolling off of him in waves. His ribs squeeze.

“Look, I gotta try and get my burger recipes ready for the Labor Day video,” Tito says, bumping his shoulder against Mat’s. “Wanna be my mongoose?”

Mat’s scowl breaks, and he can’t help but smile back at Tito’s full force grin.

—

Japan Village in Industry City doesn’t have the confectioner’s cornflakes he really needs for the Butterfingers, so Mat hops on the W in hopes that some nook or cranny in Chinatown might have it tucked away somewhere, but all he comes away with is a takeout baggy full of fried dumplings. Of course, by that point, all Brooklyn bound subways are fucked for...no discernible reason that Mat can parse out, so he has to take the E all the way up to the cesspool known as Penn Station and get on the goddamn motherfucking Long Island Railroad, rage texting the group chat as he stands in the aisle because there are never any seats on peak trains.

The commute is an absolute pain in the ass, and he knew that when he signed the lease over a year ago, but he likes Floral Park because it’s not Brooklyn. He likes the bodega that’s a five minute walk away, likes the trees that line his block, likes that he actually has a place to park his car. He likes the old couple next door with their dachshunds who wave at him whenever they catch him going out or coming home. He likes being able to jog in the park nearby, likes that he can walk around without seeing another living human being for a while, likes locking his door at the end of the night and hearing nothing. After spending all day sardine’d into subway cars and pushing through hoards of people on overcrowded sidewalks, stuck in elevators and tiny cramped cafes, everyone constantly talking, yelling, looking...he loves the quiet.

Most of all, though, he loves his kitchen.

“It’s been a long, long week, guys,” Mat tells the camera. He’s propped his phone up against the bag of sugar sitting on his island, live on Instagram for no other reason than he really, really needs the ego boost. “There’s nothing like taking your stress out on some dough.”

_bro it’s tuesday,_ is the first comment he sees on the screen, and he snorts.

“I know it’s only Tuesday—that’s what I’m saying,” Mat stresses, turning the dough out onto his counter top in one goopy pour.

The apartment itself is whatever—the basement of a split level duplex with minimal natural light, everything offensively beige from the dull carpet to the sunken in sofa that came with the place. He’s put next to no time or money into decorating any of the rooms, with the exception of his full to bursting closet and the bulky metal organizer he bought from IKEA for his shoes. The remodeled kitchen, though, gleams just beyond the sparse living room, with its soft closing cabinet doors, smudge proof stainless steel appliances, and so much goddamn black granite counter space Mat barely knows what to do with it all. Not to mention _the dishwasher,_ which Mat likes to drop pictures of into the group chat whenever they try to roast him for not being a "real New Yorker."

“Okay, so, your dough’s gonna be a little wet, a little sticky,” he tells the stream. “That’s good—don’t get crazy with your flour, ‘cause it’s just gonna make your bread denser. And now we’re just gonna give it a good kneading.”

The comments are about what he expects._ i’m all wet & sticky too,_ and, _god i wish i were that dough_

Then, _wheere’s tito????_

“Uh,” Mat tries not to make a face, leaning his weight against the counter as he presses down with the heels of his hands, pushing out then folding it back in. “He’s probably running around Astoria somewhere, eating his weight in soup dumplings or something.”

Far, far away from Mat’s kitchen. It’s hard, working in a place that pretty much has cameras rolling 24/7, but he does his best to make sure his on-screen time with Tito is as limited as possible. The quick cameos that get ripped and gif’d and usually retweeted or reposted by the test kitchen’s official social media accounts are bad enough—but full length videos? With Mat’s huge, embarrassing, obvious crush on full display for the entire world to see and meme? Abso-fucking-lutely not.

A few comments pop up, one from titobeau18 that reads, _babe why u gotta call me out like that :C_

Mat snorts, tucking the dough underneath itself, rounding the top before scooping it into the empty bowl nearby. “Okay, so because it’s sourdough it takes like, three times as long to proof, so this guy’s gotta sit for another few hours. Swear it’s worth it, though. Sometimes the things that take the longest are worth the wait.”

—

The filling keeps falling apart.

He’s tried forming and baking them individually, he’s tried making one giant sheet and then cutting the bars out, he’s tried reforming the broken bits together with a diluted corn syrup, and every attempt crumbles before it even makes it into his mouth. Except attempt number four, which had nearly chipped his front teeth when he tried to bite into it.

It’s not just that the fillings won’t hold. It’s not even that the pale, puke-ish color is way off. It’s not even that he has to temper the fucking chocolate. 

No, it’s that it tastes like shit.

“It’s not that bad,” Tito assures him, chewing thoughtfully. “It’s just...not...good?”

Mat stares, deadpan. “It’s hot garbage—just say it.”

“Woah, hey now.” Tito holds up a hand. “It’s not garbage of any temperature. It’s just...subpar peanut brittle.”

Mat groans, collapsing against the counter with his face buried in his crossed arms. 

“Listen, man,” Tito says, “at least when you fuck up, no one’s at risk of dying from botulism.”

That manages to wrestle a weak smile out of Mat. He’s seen what Tito has to deal with when one of his videos goes left—months of careful fermentation or dehydration, of waiting and patience, thrown out the window by the most minuscule of fuck ups. In the face of it all, though, Tito like to say that there aren’t any real mistakes when it comes to cooking, that it’s all about the process, about learning what works and what doesn’t. Mat’s always been in equal parts jealous and in awe of that, the way Tito lets everything roll of his shoulders, the way Tito smiles when he messes up, the way Tito always smiles.

“And look at it this way,” Tito says, clapping Mat’s shoulder. “You’re right on schedule for your day three breakdown.”

Mat snaps a dish towel at him, and Tito jerks away—too far, not realizing the end of the workstation is right there, too fast to re-balance, arms windmilling as he ends up sprawling out onto the floor with a painful sounding _oof!_ Mat laughs so hard he doubles over, putting his hands out to catch himself against the counter and accidentally knocking the tray of filling onto the tiles.

—

Mat’s scooping the dough out of it’s basket and into the little dutch oven he’s prepped when there’s a knock on his apartment door. He looks around for the rag he threw somewhere, the knocking getting louder and more persistent, and Mat sighs, wiping his hands down his shirt as he darts across the living room. When he yanks the door open, Tito’s on the other side, leaning with one hand braced against the frame. He looks the same as when Mat saw him in the lobby a few hours ago, but seeing him framed by the last wash of sunlight, changed into sweats and a stretched out t-shirt, like he’s never belonged anywhere else, Mat’s dumb heart gives a good throb

“I’ve come,” he says, “to get that bread.”

Mat moves out of the way. “There better be booze in that man purse.”

Tito loops the strap of his messenger bag over his head. “You weren’t mocking the murse when you needed someone to hide your candy the last time we went to the movies.”

“Please.” Mat’s eyes slip shut. “Don’t say the c-word. I’d literally rather re-watch _Midsommar_ than think about anything even remotely related to work right now.”

“Did you ever stop and think that maybe,” Tito says, “the real Butterfingers? Were the friends you made along the way.”

“Bud, I will ättestupa your ass into oblivion, I swear to god—and take off your shoes, you animal.”

Tito kicks his runners off and, like the MVP that he is, pulls out a sizable bottle of Fireball from his bag. 

They sip mixed drinks out of novelty Medieval Times mugs, Tito sitting up on the counter, feet dangling as he watches Mat score the bread, listening to Mat talk, and talk, and talk. “The whole reason scoring is a thing—yeah, it helps the rise, but also back in the day when entire towns had only one big oven, people would mark their loaves with specific symbols so they knew exactly which one was theirs.”

“Oh my god,” Tito snorts. “You’re such a nerd.”

“I’m sorry,” Mat says, “you almost cried over sauerkraut last week. You have literally no room to judge me.”

Tito sips from his mug, pointing. “Write M plus T forever. No, write B and B forever with a giant heart. No, write—”

“Oh my god, no!”

_“C’mooooon,_ please?” 

Mat sighs, drawing his lame across the soft dough in a big, pointed B, and tilts the dutch oven to show Tito the top. “There.”

Tito squints. “It looks like the Bluetooth symbol.”

“Yo, it does not.”

“Barzy, man, yes it does.”

Once Mat’s about the take the bread out of the oven, he goes back on Instagram live, dinner bubbling on the stove, air heavy with the tang of tomato, oil, garlic. There’s a burst of comments from people excited to see Tito stirring bolognese sauce in the background, punctuated with dozens of heart-eyed emojis. 

“Yeah, Tito came over,” Mat tells the stream. “He’s gonna be my mongoose.”

The first comment that floats to the top of the stream is, _what in the ever loving christ does that mean_ followed by bunches of others asking the same thing.

“Okay, so.” Mat tucks his hair behind his ears. “When Tito started at the test kitchen, I was doing this recipe for uh, the fudgiest brownies possible, and I was testing batches. So I asked him if he’d be my guinea pig, and the look on his face—”

“That’s not a thing in French!” Tito shouts from the background.

Mat keeps going, “It never made in on the video, but it’s gotta be on some lost footage somewhere—Tito made these sweet spicy pickles and was all like, _you can been my mongoose,_ like that makes _any_ sense—”

“It makes way more sense than a _guinea pig.”_

“Dude, no, it really doesn’t.”

“Whatever, just cut the bread already. I’m starving.”

Mat rolls his eyes, biting back another grin as he eases the bread out of the dutch oven and onto the cutting board. “It’s pretty hot right now, but if we flip it over and tap the bottom—”

Tito lets out a loud _pfft_ against the rim of his mug. “Wow, the chat’s gonna have a field day with that one.”

“—you can hear that it sounds hollow,” Mat ignores Tito, knocking the crust with his knuckle. “We’re gonna let it cool for a few, so if you guys have any questions…”

He gets the typical _will you raw me sideways_ comments, but peppered between the obscene are genuine questions about bread baking and his process, about how long it really takes, about what he uses. They’re thoughtful, and there’s a lot of them.

“Can you please just blow my back out?” Mat’s head whips around, eyeballs nearly popping out of his skull before he realizes Tito is squinting at the stream comments, reading a random one. “Quesarahsarah wants to know.”

Mat swallows, thick, hoping his heart doesn’t look like it feels—pounding right out of his chest like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. He rubs hands over his burning face, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes as he leans his elbows against the counter. “Thanks for the support, Sarah.”

Tito laughs, then turns back to the phone, and uplit by the glow of the screen, grin turning manic as he asks, “Leddpipe wants to know why you carved the bluetooth symbol into the top.”

Mat throws a dishrag at Tito’s dumb, smug face.

The bread is still hot to the touch when Mat slices into it, steam curling up as he hands the first piece to Tito in a napkin. Mat pretends to busy himself with sweeping crumbs off the cutting board, trying not to openly stare as Tito’s jaw works, his eyelashes fluttering, a chest deep moan finally breaking the silence. “God, I love it when you make bread.”

The tight twist of tension that’d coiled itself around Mat’s ribs snaps, and all that wound up energy scatters everywhere, in all directions, vibrating through his nerves in a burst of something that hasn’t quite decided what it wants to be. Happiness? Nausea? Self-loathing? All of the above? In the end, he manages a small, pleased smile he turns away from Tito, cutting off another slice.

—

There are gifs.

They’ve been sent to him by just about everyone he knows—someone ripped his stream and made gifs with subtitles and everything, catching every splitting smile and neon blush through a lagging and grainy Instagram live video, turned crisp and bright through some Photoshop magic. Mat pinches at the bridge of his nose as he leans back in his desk chair, the phone on his knee showing a constant loop of his openly besotted face as Tito bites into the bread.

“So I saw your livestream.”

“Jesus fucking—” Mat seizes, nearly tipping backwards, phone flying as his arms windmill. The wheels of his chair creak in protest as he slams back forward, the breath caught in his throat finally bursting out in a deep, long sigh. He looks up at Anders, who’s watching him from over the top of his cubicle with a wry grin.

Anders isn’t scary. He’s the polar opposite of scary, all superhero jaw and disarming dimples, golden hued in a simple, quiet way, not that much older than Mat. Still, when your direct superior says anything along the lines of _I saw your livestream,_ it can’t feel like anything less than a physical blow to the gut. Mat’s voice cracks, “Um.”

“You guys are really great together,” he goes on, perched on the edge of Mat’s desk with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee. He’s got bright blue socks on with a little woven dog pattern—tiny Australian shepherds. “We’ve been kicking the idea around of doing more baking basics videos, and I think you and Tito should be the ones to do it.”

Mat was never really meant to be on camera. He’d lucked into the role while he was still working as Anders’ assistant, an intern before that, and when Anders took over the media division after the previous manager left without notice, he revamped everything to gear more towards a Youtube audience. The gourmet Dunkaroos video was a throwaway idea they ended up shooting at nine o’clock at night in horrific lighting after maybe a drink too many in Anders’ office, one shot, minimal editing, Mat’s greasy hair stuffed under a backwards Islanders cap, um-ing and uh-ing through the entire fifteen minute run time. Naturally, it went viral.

“Don’t Zeeker and Marty usually do those?” Mat asks.

“They do the cooking ones.” Anders waves a hand. “I want you to try doing more baking and pastry centered ones. Like with the bread last night.”

Mat bites the inside of his cheek. The part of him that wants to say no (the good, self-preserving part of him that knows how long and intimate filming can be), or the part of him that wants to say yes (the awful, sabotaging part of himself that keeps replaying the moment of Tito’s fluttering eyelashes on a constant loop when he’s trying to sleep)—they’re both irrelevant. Anders is asking him to do it, so.

“Yeah, sure,” Mat says, mouth tightening into a line that doesn’t tip up or down. “Let me ask him.”

—

Of course Tito says yes, because Tito has no tumultuous inner conflict over his ridiculous middle school crush. Tito says yes because Tito always says yes. Tito is always game, whether it’s noodling for catfish in Appalachia or listening to Bails go on for hours about molecular gastronomy and the wonders of making things that should never be foam into foam. It’s a good part of the reason Mat has said ridiculous middle school crush.

“I’ve never actually made bread,” Tito says, smile turning shy as his cheeks pink up. Mat’s chest swoops, for no fucking reason.

“That’s great. It’s perfect,” Anders tells them, lighting up. “You’ll be like, a proxy for the audience. Any questions you have is a question they would have. We’ll have the A team shoot it—let’s get it on the board as soon as possible, ‘cause I want it out in time for the Holidays.”

“Yessir, Bossman sir,” Tito salutes. Anders snorts, giving his shoulder a shove as he passes by, heading back towards the kitchen. Tito turns to Mat, “We finally get to do another video together!”

Mat swallows, mouth stretching into something he hopes comes close to a grin. The first and last full video they ever did together was a sweet vs savory episode where they both made pies, almost two years ago when Mat’s infatuation was still just that—harmless, shallow, undefined. Mat has only ever watched it once, from between his fingers, because all he did for the entire thing was moon at Tito, blushing and giggling, finding any excuse to touch, to lean in close, to look at him. It didn’t go unnoticed by the nearly three million people who watched it, either—half the comments on that video are some variation of _keep it in your pants, Mathew._

Mat knows—knows in the same way he knew he wanted to be a chef, the same way he knows he doesn’t want to move to Brooklyn, the same way he knows Tito doesn’t feel the same—that this video is going to be a disaster. One he’s walking into, facing forward with eyes wide open.

—

Mat doesn’t really sleep that night. He stress bakes chocolate croissants until 2am and eats four of them on the back patio listening to someone’s car alarm go off in an echo over the neighborhood. His phone buzzes on the tiny plastic table with a text from Ebs. _zeeker just sent me the sched_

Ebs...knows. Everyone pretty much knows, which is horrifically embarrassing, but Ebs is probably the least dick-ish about it. He gets the feeling—after having spent what feels like an infinite amount of nights passing out drunk on Ebs’ pullout sofa—that Ebs knows heartache. 

_It’s fine,_ Mat lies, because it has to be.

_ok,_ Ebs sends back. _we finishng budderfingers tmrw?_

Mat’s thumbs fly, _UM HOW DO YOU THINK BUTTER IS SPELLED????_

—

They do not finish Butterfingers. They don’t even come close.

Mat sinks down onto the floor behind the workstation, knees tucked to his chest. He’s pretty sure Scotty’s filming him from above, recording his breakdown from a bird’s eye view, but he can’t pick his head up from where it’s hanging to actually look up and be sure.

“Um,” Tito’s voice drifts in from somewhere behind him, “Is this...a bad time?”

“He’s fine,” Ebs assures, pauses, then adds, “Probably.”

The toe of Tito’s sneaker nudges against Mat’s ankle, and he doesn’t stop until Mat’s head snaps to attention, scowling because he just wants to have his breakdown in peace—is that so much to ask?

“Here.” There’s a clear plastic bag of something oat-like, the name on the front in Japanese. When Mat squints, Tito says, “They’re special cornflakes, ‘cause it doesn’t look like the cereal ones are working.”

Mat’s eyes burn, giving one, two, three hard blinks because he _is not_ crying on camera over cornflakes. He reaches up slowly, hands taking the small bag and pressing his thumb against the red font across the front. His mouth opens and shuts, and he wants to say thank you but he’s afraid it’s going to come out as _I love you._

Fingers wrap around his forearm, tugging Mat up, and the rest of him follows.

“I looked,” Mat says, shaking the bag in Tito’s face, “_everywhere_ for this. I was on Amazon until 4am trying to find it—how—”

Tito shrugs, mouth slotting into a lopsided grin. “I know a guy.”

Mat surges forward, wrapping his arms around Tito and crushing him in close, his face pressing into Tito’s shoulder. He smells like city, like asphalt and exhaust, but under that is laundry and cologne, salt, skin. A hand snakes around to the middle of Mat’s back, pressing there warm and heavy, and Mat remembers suddenly where he is, the shine from Scotty’s lens glaring right at them. He jerks back, cheeks burning, tucking his hair behind his ears over and over even when there’s nothing left to tuck. “I—uh—yeah—”

“You’re welcome,” Tito tells him, caught in the setting sunlight pouring in from the wall of windows, sticking in his hair, eyes lit like lanterns, big and bright and looking nowhere but Mat. “But maybe you should call it quits ‘til tomorrow, yeah?”

He’s still clutching onto the bag of cornflakes like it’s a lifeline. Mat clears his throat, looking away as he puts them on the counter, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s...a good idea.”

“Alright,” Ebs cuts in. “That’s a wrap for day seven.”

—

In the quiet of his kitchen that night, Mat makes more loaves of bread. He wants the best all-around recipe for when he and Tito shoot their video together, which...he really can’t think about too much, because his heart might bust straight out of his chest. He’s gotten into a rhythm over the past week, feeding starter, mixing, proofing new batches when he gets home for work and in the morning before he leaves, then baking the ones that are ready to go.

No livestream, no music, nothing but him and the dough, working it against the counter, over and over in a tide that pushes out every inch of tension that’s been pulled taught through his joints. He used to do this a lot when he first moved to New York, before he’d really made any friends, just baking compulsively, nearly to the point where he wasn’t sleeping, just the same recipes over and over again until they were perfect.

He bakes the two he left proofing in the fridge, watching the glowing green numbers on the oven’s clock slip into the early morning. He knows he needs to get at least a few hours of sleep in, but this is the only thing that helps. It’s the only thing that quiets his stupid, screaming brain. Measuring, weighing, mixing, kneading, turning, proofing, baking—it’s that balance between precision and art, control and chance, sense and metamorphosis.

He sighs, looking down at the cooled loaf as the first reach of watery 6am light breaks through his blinds. He doesn’t bother slicing it, just bites into the end and tears off a chunk with his teeth, tearing through that crisp brown outside that gives way to warmth and flavor and tang that days ago was nothing except flour and water. Mat rips off another bite, suddenly starved.

—

He’s saved from the hell that would be day eight of the Butterfingers video by Tito’s buddy who runs a popular food blog crashing the test kitchen and jumping in for a last minute collab video. Mat works quietly in the background, smiling to himself and trying not to look over at the camera too much as Tito whirlwinds around the kitchen, laughing and joking and just generally being a ham.

“Okay, but like,” he hears Tito ask, “is botulism even a thing anymore? When was the last time anyone actually died from botulism?”

“Dude,” Ross says, laughing and giving Tito’s shoulder a shove. “It’s 100% still a thing.”

Ross is 6’5 and could probably dislocate Tito’s shoulder with his pinky, but that doesn’t stop Tito from shoving him back, the two of them devolving into a wrestling match next to the giant pot of boiling water Casey has on the stove, Jesus fucking Christ. 

“Barz,” Tito wheezes, his head locked under Ross’ armpit. “Barzy, come try some—tell us how we did. Be our mongoose!”

_“Mongoose?”_ Ross laughs, letting go of Tito with one last rough tousle to his already ruined hair.

Tito’s face goes pink, eyes meeting Mat’s then skimming away as he tries to smooth his hair down. “Yeah, well, it—it’s a long story.”

Mat takes a fork and stabs into the bowl of soba and greens, slathered in a healthy pour of their miso mustard, twirling gently with his hand cupped underneath as he brings it to his mouth. There’s a salty tang in his jaw, an acute, delicious ache that lets a moan bubble up from his chest. “Ooh, that’s nice. That’s really nice.”

Tito stares at him, lips parted. Ross whoops behind him, double high-fiving Ebs and knocking the stack of empty dirty bowls clear off the counter.

“Alright, alright—Jesus,” Tito laughs, hair sticking out in all directions. Mat wants to push his fingers through it, wants to tug. “Let’s marinate this fish before you bring the whole building down.”

When he turns back, he catches Mat shoveling the rest of the noodles into his mouth. 

“Uh,” Mat manages through a mouthful, “I didn’t have breakfast this morning.”

There’s a sharp eye roll, softened by a fond tilt of Tito’s lips before he pauses, crease forming between his eyebrows. He’s staring at Mat’s mouth, hand coming up as he moves in closer, then closer still. Mat’s brain short circuits, any semblance of logic he could use to reason this away bursting into flames as warm fingers brush against his jaw, the pad of Tito’s thumb against the corner of Mat’s mouth. “You got—”

Tito steps back, splotch of mustard on his thumb, and Mat’s skin burns from his hairline to his shirt collar. Tito shoots him a grin before he sticks his finger in his mouth, pulling off with a wet pop and turning back to Ross and Johnny, loudly arguing over what, exactly, a Chilean sea bass is.

His head feels like it’s been stuffed, dazed and fuzzy as he spins, trying to grasp onto some, any solid thought that’ll tell him what he’s supposed to be doing right now. The only thing that finally snaps him out of it is realizing Scotty’s still filming him, the black void of his lens glaring at Mat from across the counter. Every molecule in Mat’s body seizes, and he snaps his head around to look at Ebs, who simply says, “I’ll tell Devon to cut it, relax.”

Mat sags against the station, joints turned to jelly. When they finally re-solidify, the crew’s shuffled off to get shots of Tito filleting the fish, and Mat ducks, running back to his desk where he hides out for the rest of the day.

—

“Dude,” Fabbs yells at him on Skype that night, “Just _tell_ him. This isn’t fucking high school—you had actual game in high school.”

Mat rubs a hand over his face. “It’s not that simple.”

High school had been so clean cut, Mat so sure of who he was and what he wanted, all straight lines and perfect corners through locker lined hallways and rows of desks. Moving to New York at eighteen, getting through culinary school, falling into a job he wasn’t sure he even deserved—suddenly everything was warped, his edges melting into a shape that couldn’t fit anywhere it used to. It’s taken three years, two therapists, and moving out of the city to actually feel okay again, and Fabbs stuck with him through all of that. Through all of Mat’s asshole episodes where he’d ghost everyone from back home for months on end for no other reason than because he just couldn’t deal. Through all of Mat's whining and general sadsack-ery, through his breakdown over spending a summer in France, through all his long winded rants about the MTA and how Robert Moses was probably the worst person who ever lived. Fabbs gets it.

“Bullshit,” Fabbs’ grainy face says, “In the wise words of Canada’s most influential leader and icon—why you gotta make things so complicated?”

Mat slumps back in his desk chair. “I’m not making anything—we’re friends. He’s my best friend—” Mat stops himself at Fabbs’ deep frown. “—my best friend who’s not currently below the Mason Dixon line. We _work_ together. I see him every day, and I can’t just start fucking around with that.”

“You know what I see?” Fabbs asks, voice heavy, laden with an over saturated sincerity that makes Mat wince. “I see the way you’re acting like you’re somebody else, gets me frustrated.”

Mat glares at the screen. “Okay. Okay, that’s it—good night.”

Fabbs breaks into a piercing falsetto, _“And you fall, and you crawl, and you break—”_

Mat ends the call. He knows that Fabbs isn’t finished, knows his phone’s about to be flooded with dozens of angry texts and god knows what else, but he doesn’t think he minds. Not really.

—

“Welcome to day,” Mat sighs, eyes slipping shut, “eight...of motherfucking goddamn shitfuck fuckerfingers.”

“Cut,” Ebs huffs. “Let’s try that again.”

“Have someone else do the intro then!” Mat throws his hands up. “Because blasphemy is all you’re gonna get out of me.”

Ebs cocks an eyebrow, a silent challenge, before shrugging and cupping a hand around his mouth. “Tito! Get your ass over here!”

_And the hits,_ Mat thinks, _just keep on coming._

“Yeah?” Tito asks, sipping from a jar of one of his ungodly health tonics, chunks of garlic and sprigs of rosemary floating in a hazy gold liquid that smells like pure vinegar. “What’s up?”

“Can you intro for us?” Ebs asks, shooting a pointed look over at Mat. “Someone can’t keep his pottymouth in check.”

_“Someone can’t keep his pottymouth in check,”_ Mat mocks in a high pitched whine, making a face. “What are you, my second grade teacher?”

“You said shitfuck fuckerfingers in second grade?” Scotty asks, and it punches a huge laugh right out of Tito.

“Barz,” Tito gasps. “Dude, no.”

Mat crosses his arms, biting the inside of his cheek.

“Did you eat breakfast?” Tito asks, head tilted. As if to answer for him, Mat’s stomach rips a growl so loud he’s pretty sure everyone on the ground floor can hear it. “Okay, why don’t you let Noah set up your station, and I’ll make you some eggs.”

Some childish, petulant part of Mat want to hunch over and refuse, wants to stomp his feet and tell Tito off. But there’s a hand at the small of his back, leading him away from his nuclear explosion of a workstation, and okay. Okay.

“Here,” Tito pushes the jar towards Mat’s face. “Have a sip. It’ll make you feel better.”

Mat jerks away. “Yo, it burns just to smell that.”

“C’mon, just a swig—put some hair on your chest, Mathew.”

“Bud, your chest is literally as smooth as a baby’s ass.”

“What can I say? Your mom prefers it waxed.”

—

He bakes the filling in one huge tray and cuts them individually with his handmade mold as a guide after they cool, taking him into the late afternoon, west facing windows making the entire kitchen feel a stitch too warm. Mat’s sweating through hit t-shirt, and Ebs has to keep prompting him to talk and explain things because he’s just dead set on finishing.

“Moment of truth,” Mat says, taking a fallen off piece of filling and biting off a corner for the camera. His eyes slip shut, concentrating on the taste, texture, chewing slowly and methodically.

He makes a break for it.

“Barz—_Mat!”_ Ebs shouts after him, and Mat’s vaguely aware there’s an entire film crew clunking after him as he sprints across the kitchen and down the narrow hallway, towards the office.

Tito’s desk is right next to his, dripping with odds and ends, pictures of his family back in Montreal, the photobooth strip of him and Mat from their first office Christmas party, black and white so no one can tell how flushed Mat was from drinking way too much champagne, faces squished from huge smiles, garland wrapped around their necks and ties long gone. Tito’s pinpoint focused on some blog he’s editing, and does a double take in surprise when Mat storms over with the crew behind him. “What—”

Mat shoves the filling into his open mouth.

“Dude!” Tito manages through a mouthful, but chews reflexively. His eyes light up. _“Dude.”_

Mat reflects him, beaming.

—

The rest is almost too easy, but Mat’s won’t say as much out loud because he cannot go jinxing himself now. Clutter works his magic with the sous vide machine so tempering the chocolate isn’t as fucking heinous as it usually is, setting perfectly after the first test, rich and semi-sweet with that perfect gloss and snap. Mat coats the bars in the greased silicone molds they used for the Milky Way video and lets them set before turning them out onto the counter, plating them with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt on top for good measure.

“It’s lighter,” Shannon tells him, smacking her lips. “It’s not as dense as the original, but the crisp is there, the crunch is there...less sweet, but god, what a good flavor. I could eat like fifty of these.”

“Yo, it even sticks in your teeth!” Marty shouts from across the room. “I got chunks in my molars that I’m saving for later!”

Usually what happens when Mat wraps a gourmet video is he has to beg people to try some—not because they think it’ll be bad, but because most of them don’t want to be on camera on any given weekday afternoon, in a video about to be seen by millions of people. But the Butterfingers have been such a saga, there’s a line going across the kitchen and out into the hallway as every editor, assistant, production member and intern makes their way down to try a piece. 

“Nice job, Barzy,” Anders says, giving Mat’s shoulder a good squeeze. Most of the kitchen’s been cleared out, all the equipment broken down and being carted out as the last few chewing stragglers edge towards the exit. “Can’t wait to see the video.”

Mat tries not to preen, but it’s hard not to under Anders’ glowing sincerity. He picks one of the last squares of Butterfingers off of the plate and pops it into his mouth, grinning as he heads back towards the office, leaving Mat and Tito alone as the crew follows him. Mat pushes out every bit of air in his lungs, falling forward because god, it’s finally over.

“You fucking did it, Barz.” 

Mat lifts his head, smile weak but there. “If it wasn’t for you and the cornflakes—”

“You still would’ve made something amazing,” Tito cuts him off, lying through his teeth. Mat’s just so exhausted, and all he wants to fall into him, wants to wrap his arms around Tito’s shoulders and nuzzle into the crook of his neck. He wants everything, and in the empty kitchen it’s all starting to overflow inside of him, the flood of adrenaline from finally finishing this stupid fucking video cutting away every knot of tension and leaving nothing but a hollow, gutted feeling behind. Tito snorts, “You think this was bad, just wait until you have to teach me how to make bread.”

“Trust me.” Mat unloops the apron from around his neck. “Bread I can do in my sleep.”

“Yeah, but _I_ have to be the one who makes it,” Tito reminds him. “You’re only allowed to like, instruct or whatever.”

Mat cocks an eyebrow. “What, you don’t trust that I can lead us to victory?”

“I don’t trust _me_ to not mess it all up,” Tito laughs, looking down, and all of the bluster and bravado has deflated from his usually straight shoulders. “Like, I don’t think you know how good you are sometimes. You do stuff...and I don’t know how you do it. All I do is run around yelling dumb shit at people, and leaving things in jars to rot.” 

“I mean,” Mat’s tongue is heavy in his mouth as he tries for an easy tone, “No one’s died from botulism yet, so.”

Tito’s lips half-tilt, but he still won’t look up. Mat’s fingers twitch, making some abortive gesture like he’s about to grab onto the front of Tito’s shirt, not to pull him in or push him away, but to just...hold him there. Tito’s gaze lifts, their eyes connecting, and there isn’t much space between them. Inches, seconds, silence.

The kitchen door bangs open, Ebs blundering through. “Fuck, is my phone in here?”

Mat jerks away, head swiveling to find something, anything to focus on. 

“I was halfway to the subway, and—” he breaks off. Mat can’t look at him, but he imagines Ebs is taking in the scene of the two of them in the half-dark kitchen, alone, refusing to look at each other. “Uh.”

“I haven’t seen it,” Tito’s voice jumps to life, so level and easy it’s clear his heart isn’t trying to pinball out of his chest. “Maybe it’s in the walk-in?”

Ebs squints. “Why would I leave my phone in the walk-in?”

“I don’t know, Ebs,” Tito sighs. “Why would you leave your phone in the dehydrator, or the oven, or the food processor, or literally any of the other weird places you have, in fact, left your phone?”

Ebs pauses, lips pursed, then, “Fair point, let me look.”

The phone isn’t in the walk-in, and the three of them end up spending an hour looking for it, until Mat somehow finds it stuffed into a cabinet it with the cheese graters.

—

“Jesus,” Casey says, “Christ.”

“More like,” Marty says, picking up one of the many, many loaves of bread all over the kitchen, “Jesus Crust.”

Mat scowls—he’d tried to get out the door while Marty and Casey were still in the car, but his hair was refusing to cooperate, and just as he got some semblance of bounce and height he heard the doorknob rattling with what was probably the spare key he kept in the broken bird feeder. He really had to find a new hiding place for that. “I was trying to find the best, y’know, basic recipe for Tito.”

_“Ohhhh,”_ Casey drawls, hooking an arm around Mat’s neck, “This is all for _Tito._ I see.”

Mat flushes, scrambling, “No, not like—”

“Get it,” Marty says through a bite of bread, “Jesus Crust—anyone? _Anyone?”_

Casey snaps a picture of Mat’s kitchen. “This is going in the group chat.”

“What? No!” Mat lunges forward, but Marty catches him around the waist, and seconds later he feels his phone buzz in his back pocket. Then again, and again. He groans, slumping forward and hanging limp in Marty’s hold. “I fucking hate you guys.”

“No you don’t,” Marty says, bright and simple as he reaches for a second loaf, taking a big chomp out of it. “I like this one better.”

“Different brand of whole wheat,” Mat mutters, scrolling through the group chat, just a barrage of gray bubbles roasting him alive. Tito’s icon pops up, a stupid picture of him with a mustard mustache Mat took at the beginning of the summer, and Mat’s heart sinks. The text reads, _this legit looks like something a serial killer would do_

“Okay, enough pining.” Casey ropes Mat into a headlock. “I got a thirty dollar Uber credit and zero fucks—let’s get shwasted.”

—

The thing about drinking with chefs and/or various food people is that, most of the time, they end up ordering food and forgetting about the drinks. Wines and liquors are paired, decanted, sniffed and swirled, sipped slowly throughout the night until they all pile into cabs to head home, more full than tipsy.

Casey and Marty aren’t regular food people, though. They were brought on as the face of Anders’ new media team, two guys without any formal training who’d spent most of their careers as line order cooks at bars and had made a name for themselves posting insane recipes like barbeque turducken and caviar Cheetos. There was an article in the Post that called them the ringleaders of the lowbrow Instachef wave, as insubstantial and tasteless as the foods they make. Mat only knows this because Marty had the physical paper framed and it hangs above his desk in the office. 

So that night, when they go to some no-name dive bar on the South Shore that has an entire menu made up of shit probably grabbed out of a freezer and stuck in a microwave, they get _hammered._

“But like, instead of Butterfingers,” Casey says, pointing with the mouth of his bottle, “Budfingers. With CBD oil.”

“We’d make a billion dollars. Easy. A trillion, maybe.” Marty is nodding so hard Mat’s afraid his head might roll off. “We could help _so many_ three-legged dogs. Barzy, you in on this?”

“Fuck no,” Mat says against the rim of his drink. “I’m never making another anything-finger for as long as I fucking live.”

“What are we talking about?” Clutter asks, coming up behind Mat with another round of shots. 

“Mat’s never fingering anything ever again,” Marty tells him, reaching for a glass.

Mat’s mouth drops open. “That’s not what—”

Clutter cocks an eyebrow, handing Mat a shot. “You planning on letting Tito know that?” 

“You guys are the worst,” Mat stresses, face on fire. “Like, worse than the comment section on any given Youtube video.”

They are the worst, but Mat’s four shots deep so he can admit, at least to himself, that he loves them. He loves his shithead friends.

“Hey,” Casey cuts in, stealing fries off Mat’s long forgotten plate. “You’re right, but hey.”

—

They dump Mat off back at his place near 3am, Marty stealing three loaves from the counter, one of himself, one for Casey, and one for their Uber driver. Mat is...drunk. Drunk enough that he made out with a guy in the alcove near the bathrooms, and drunk enough that he didn’t even care when Clutter caught them. Drunk enough that he’s not really sure what the guy looked like, except that he had bright eyes and hot hands that’d skimmed underneath the hem of Mat’s shirt. He can still feel them, like a brand against his waist, humming under his skin as he sprawls out on his bed, lazy fingers trailing up and down the front of his stomach.

He’s drunk enough to prop up his laptop on his chest and open up Youtube, and click on a familiar face in his recommended videos.

“It’s like that movie, you know? The one that’s like,” Tito’s voice rings out through the speakers, sounding impossibly small and tinny compared to the big boom it normally carries in any room. On screen, he’s whipping a wooden spoon around. “Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves are like beating the _BLEEP_ out of each other on the beach, and then Swayze’s begging him like, _c’mon man just let me surf this last wave, I’ve been waiting my whole life._ And Keanu knows if he lets Swayze go that he’s gonna die out there, so he uncuffs him, and the FBI is bugging out, _why’d you let him go!_ And Keanu’s like _I didn’t_ and just walks off and throws his badge in the ocean...That's what it’s like taking the Cross Island to the LIE.” A pause, startled eyes finally landing on the camera. “Oh _BLEEP_ are we recording?” 

Mat still laughs, even though he’s watched this video probably a thousand times.

“Hey, everyone,” it cuts to a more composed Tito, leaning against his station in a white t-shirt that strains against his broad shoulders, arms on full display. “Today we’re gonna be making Jun tea, which is kind of like kombucha but we’re gonna be adding…”

In person, Mat does his best to never get stuck staring at Tito for too long, but here in the privacy of his own dim, beige bedroom, watching Tito run around the test kitchen with a giant jarred SCOBY, Mat can look his fill. He drags a hand down his face. He can’t keep doing this to himself, but it’s been like this for nearly two years now, and every time he thinks he finds a way out—dating someone new, spending less time with Tito, convincing himself he’s over it—it all gets undone by something inane like a smile or a cup of coffee, so small and simple that wedges itself between Mat’s ribs and makes a home next to his heart.

Mat shoves the laptop away, room swimming as he tries to sit up. He needs another fucking drink.

He’s under the sink rummaging around for the spare booze he hid somewhere in the cabinet when there’s a buzzing sound above him, and Mat knocks his head against the counter, hissing as he pulls himself out and sees Tito’s face lighting up his phone.

Mat doesn’t think, he just accepts the call.

The first thing Tito says is, “Holy shit, Clutter was right—you _are_ drunk.”

“No m’not,” Mat huffs, hunkering down onto the stool at his breakfast bar. “Jus’...a lil tipsy.”

Tito’s in his bed, Mat can tell, oversized t-shirt stretched out at the neck, his glasses on, hair ungelled and soft looking. 

“I never get to see you drunk,” Tito tells him. Which is true, because Mat is very careful to never get too drunk around Tito. Ever since the first office Christmas party where Tito had to help him get back to his apartment, and Mat begged him to stay the night, wrapping all his limbs around a laughing Tito and promising like, _so many waffles_. He can barely keep from clinging and staring and flirting when he’s dead sober—at least now the buffer of distance will keep one or two of those things at a minimum. “Where the hell was my invite?”

“You fuckin’ had a date,” Mat snaps, not able to keep the edge out of his voice, and Christ he shouldn’t have picked up. 

Tito rolls his eyes. “Barely, and like, it sucked anyway, so.”

Mat grunts, pressing his overheated face to the cool granite counter top. He’s all talked out after hours at the bar, voice raw and crackling from shouting over shitty music, head swimming, but he still likes hearing Tito, likes picking his head up just enough to look at his phone and see Tito laughing at him.

From the other room, there’s a loud crashing sound and what is unmistakably Tito’s voice screaming from his laptop, and all the blood drains straight out of Mat’s body as Tito frowns at the screen and asks, “What’s that?”

“Uh.” Mat scrambles upright. “Nothinggottagobye.”

He ends the call and powers his phone down, heart booming against his ribs hard enough to rattle his bones. He’s too fucking drunk to deal with this shit, any of it, so he ends up flopping down onto his sofa and drifting in and out of thin, watery sleep until he finally gives up around a quarter to six and turns on infomercials to lull him into what he thinks might qualify as a coma.

—

He spends the rest of his weekend like that, shuffling around in pajamas that probably need to be washed (i.e., burned with fire) and ordering in for almost every meal, Monday charging ahead at full speed. When it arrives, Mat stays in bed too long, listlessly scrolling through his phone, too long standing in the shower staring at the tile wall, too long picking at his breakfast and too long finding his favorite converse. By the time he’s on the LIRR, he’s already late, and of fucking course there are “signal issues” at Jamaica and he’s stuck standing by the _clearly leaking_ bathroom for an extra twenty minutes as they crawl through Queens.

He gets to the office an hour and ten minutes after call time, sweating through his flannel shirt and severely under caffeinated. 

“Dude,” is all Ebs has to say, in a tone that really isn’t all that different from his usual monotone, but somehow still cuts Mat to the core.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” Mat says, trying to even out his breathing. He clips a stack of metal bowls with his elbow and they hit the floor like a car wreck. “I’m—fuck, sorry—”

“We had to lock Tito in the boardroom with Johnny to keep him from sprinting all the way to Floral Park,” Ebs says. “Do you not know how to answer a text?”

“I was too busy running,” Mat heaves, pushing his hair back from his sweaty face.

Ebs shoots him a look. “All weekend?”

And okay, Mat knows that’s fair, but it smarts all the same, and he opens his mouth to snap back at Ebs when Tito bursts through the double doors. “If he’s not—”

When he finally sees Mat, he stops dead in his tracks, expression caught somewhere in a kaleidoscope of shocked, ecstatic, and pissed. He settles into something so neutral it’s alarming, punctuated by a clean, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Mat manages, breathing finally evening out. “Uh, look, I’m really sorry if I freaked everyone out. I was sick all weekend, and my train was all messed up, and like, it’s just been a really long morning.”

Tito’s mouth twitches. “But you’re okay?”

_No,_ Mat thinks, but nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Tito says, then looks at Ebs. “Maybe we should do this another day.”

Ebs pushes out a big, noisy breath. “The schedule’s already so tight, and Anders really wants this one out by Thanksgiving…”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Mat insists. “We can—let’s do it now. I just need a—”

Tito hands him a thermos, steam curling out of the popped lid. Mat sips, warmth suffusing through him as his eyelids flutter. God, that’s good.

“Alright,” Ebs brings him back down to reality, clapping and rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get this bread.”

Tito leans in, whispering to Mat, “He’s been waiting all morning to say that.”

Mat snorts into his coffee, letting his shoulder bump into Tito’s.

—

Once the camera’s on him, Mat falls right into his normal posture, shoulders back and speaking from the gut, stamping down that last dregs of exhaustion and focusing on what he has to do. Tito watches him, leaning against the counter on his elbows, the collar of his shirt hanging just enough to see a flash of skin. Mat has to clear his throat and look away, reaching for his backpack.

“So first we need our sourdough starter,” Mat says, producing the jar form his bag. “You can make your own, or you can get some from a bakery, order it, whatever—this one came from my mom’s, and she’s had it for years. It’s actually the starter I first learned to bake with, so.”

“Oh my god.” Tito snatches the jar, marveling at it in his hands. “That’s so cute, what the hell.”

Mat rolls his eyes, corner of his mouth upticking. “Shut up.”

“Does she know?”

“Uh,” Mat makes a face, “She knows I took it, but I’m not sure she knows I still have it?”

“I gotta text her.” Tito fishes his phone out from his back pocket. “She needs to know.”

“Why do you have my mom’s number?” Mat bulges.

“You know what?” Tito ignores him. “I’ll Facetime her instead.”

“Do not,” Mat laughs as he lunges, “Facetime my mom, you _freak.”_

Tito jerks back, eyes never leaving his screen. “I do it all the time, it’s fine.”

“Why are you Facetiming my mom!”

“Hello?” a familiar voice crackles through the tiny phone speaker. “Anthony?”

“Hi Mama B,” Tito gushes, not missing a beat even as Mat swats at him. “We’re filming a video right now, me and your second favorite son—”

Mat makes one last, halfhearted swipe for the phone, but as Ledds lowers the boom closer to the phone to try and pick up her voice, he knows it’s useless. He sighs, “Hi mom.”

“I called you twice this weekend, Mathew,” she says, glaring down her nose at the camera. She’s in the family room, he can tell by the wallpaper behind her, and it floods back memories of sitting on the old floral sofa, hanging his head as she eviscerated him for breaking curfew or mouthing off in that same cool, measured tone. “What, sixteen hours of labor and you can’t even bother to text me back?”

“This is a nightmare,” Mat says, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “This whole day is just a waking nightmare and it’s not even 11am yet.”

“Did you know,” Tito cuts in, “that Mat still has the sourdough starter you gave him when he moved out here?”

“He better,” his mom says, but she’s melting at the edges. “When he was little I took a bread baking class, and Mat was so excited when we did it at home. He loved being my little helper—we used to pretend we were on a cooking show, like on the Food Network.”

Mat leans his elbows against the counter and buries his face in his hands.

“I think I have a picture somewhere…”

Mat whips up. “No!”

It’s too late; he sees the blur of his the family room, the bottom of the built in bookshelf along the far wall, a thick red volume Mat knows is his mom’s favorite photo album. His mom, who couldn’t figure out how to switch to her front camera the first time he Facetimed her and refused to turn her phone around, forcing him to talk to the backyard for half an hour, somehow keeps a steady aim on the photo album as she flips through. Flashes of Mat on the beach, crying and sunburnt, in huge bubble baths with his old Hot Wheels, the time his sister dressed him up in her Ariel Halloween costume, until _finally_ she lands on the one she was looking for. Mat’s maybe five, standing on a chair pushed up against the kitchen counter in an oversized apron, covered in flour, looking at the camera with one of those manic little kid smiles, stretched to the point of looking painful. “There it is. The first time we made bread.”

“Oh,” Tito says, “My god. Scotty, you getting this?”

Scotty gives a silent thumbs-up.

Mat’s eyes flicker towards the ceiling. “I’m literally such a good person, what did I ever do to deserve this?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Tito snorts. “In front of your mom?”

Mat glares, then turns to Ebs. “Don’t we have a deadline for this thing? Shouldn’t we like, get a move on?”

Ebs, the asshole, shrugs. “We can take a minute.”

—

Eventually they get back on track, saying goodbye to Mat’s mom, promising her he’ll call her back when he gets home from work. Mat underestimated how frustrating it would be to essentially just sit on his hands the whole time, watching Tito precisely but slowly measure out the whole wheat and unbleached flour, tongue taught against the corner of his mouth. He underestimated how distracting Tito’s forearms would be, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dusted with flour.

“And now we have to just wait, right?”

“Yeah, so.” Mat tucks his hair behind his ears. “Sourdough bread is a pretty slow process—like this starter, I’ve already been feeding it for like a week, every day, like you just did. So now we gotta let it munch on all the good stuff in the flour we just mixed it, and it’ll get really frothy and bubbly from releasing all it’s gasses. And in the meantime we’re gonna do something called autolyse, which is just mixing more flour and water.”

“It’s really all just flour and water, huh,” Tito muses, pulling the bags over towards the bowl.

“It’s kind of wild, when you think about it,” Mat says. “This thing, just wheat and water and yeast, gluten...In the 1700s, the French used to eat like, four pounds of bread a day, and then it was kind of what started their whole revolution, just angry mobs demanding _bread._ I mean, there was like, a whole bunch of other shit, too, but it was like a symbol for that. Where there’s food, there’s life, and bread, it’s...it’s community, it’s history, it’s _metamorphosis._ Something so simple that becomes so much more than the sum of its parts, you know?”

Tito looks at him, face unreadable, and Mat blushes.

“Sorry, I—” Mat clears his throat. “I just, I think it’s cool. Sorry that’s...probably weird, but.”

“Yeah,” Tito says, his smile slow and wide. “But you’re a giant weirdo, so. It fits.”

Mat flicks flour at him, blooming white across Tito’s apron in sync with the burst of laughter erupting between them.

—

The next day, they get to kneading.

“Am I doing this right?” Tito asks, pawing like a cat. “Is it supposed to be this wet?”

Mat watches the strands of sticky dough stretch and cling between Tito’s long, thick fingers. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, blinking rapidly when Ebs clears his throat off camera. “Uh, yeah, it—it’s supposed to be like that. Just keep working it—no, more, you really gotta put some force—”

Mat comes up behind Tito, arms snaking around. He’s technically not supposed to do anything, but if he’s just guiding Tito, he figures that’s still okay. He presses his palms to the back of Tito’s hands, the angle a little awkward as he tries to keep some distance between their bodies. It disappears, though, when he presses down, the heat from Tito’s back seeping through Mat’s apron, his shirt, his chin just tucking over Tito’s shoulder as he says, “Like this.”

Push, press, roll, repeat, motion rocking back and forth as they work the dough from a shaggy mess to something smooth, round, perfect.

“Maybe we should get some shots,” Ebs says, “of just Tito doing it?”

“Oh.” Mat lifts his hands, caught. “Right. Yeah.”

Tito says nothing, just continues through the motion Mat paced him through moments before, slow, firm, methodical. It’s kind of...entrancing, watching the strain of his forearms, the flex of his hands, the roll of his shoulders. Mat knows, without a trace of doubt, that he’s going to watch this video over, and over, and over again.

“Careful,” Casey says, popping up out of nowhere. He taps the bottom of Mat’s chin. “You’re drooling.”

Mat’s hand flies to his mouth, wiping, but there’s nothing but dry skin and stubble. Casey snorts before ducking away, back to his work station behind the camera set up, chopping something. As the day has gone on, more people have filtered in and out of the kitchen, burst of noise and color all around. They’re all loud, and nosy, and annoying, but god, looking around Mat can’t remember why he was so freaked out about coming in yesterday.

—

The next morning, they finish the video, and the bread.

“And now,” Mat says, lifting the lid off of the dutch oven, “the reveal.”

With the help of a towel and spatula, he lifts the loaf out, a deep, crisp brown all over with the scoring on top having peaked beautifully. Mat places it on the cooling rack, and looks over at Tito, who’s been covering his eyes for the past two minutes.

“It is burnt?” he asks. “Is it deformed?”

“You gotta open your eyes,” Mat says, “and see for yourself.”

Tito peeks between his fingers, then suddenly his hands are in the air above his head, followed by a whoop so loud it makes everyone’s heads turn. “Ayyyy, look at that! It looks like, professionally made.”

Mat’s face scrunches. “We _are_ professionals, Beau.”

“You know what I mean,” Tito waves him off, carefully tipping the loaf from side to side, grin huge. “Man, we made this. Hold on—I gotta send a pic to your mom.”

It’s not the best sourdough Mat’s ever had, slicing off a piece and pulling it apart to share with Scotty. It’s not even the best sourdough he’s ever made, but Tito is beaming, running around the office offering everyone a slice, so it’s better.

“Oh,” Mat startles, twisting around to spot his bag shoved off in the corner. “Before we go, I have—”

When he turns back around, Tito is watching him, the black lens of the camera just beyond his shoulder, and Mat tries not to shrink. He’d forgotten the crew was still there, but it’s too late now, the jar clearly visible in Mat’s hands as he stands up fully.

“Your own starter,” Mat tells him, voice a little rough. He clears his throat. “From mine.”

He expects Tito to laugh through a mouthful of bread, make a joke about having a piece of Mat’s mom forever and ever. He expects some over the top posturing, some bravado, hamming it up for the camera. He expects a lot, but not the way Tito’s eyes go round and shiny, swallowing thickly and slowly taking the jar in his own hands, staring down at it with parted lips and a shifting expression. He’s not expecting how rough Tito’s voice sounds when he goes, “Thank you.”

He’s not expecting to be pulled in suddenly by Tito’s arm hooking around his neck, yanking hard. Mat’s gaze flickers to the camera, to Ebs’ arched expression, to Casey snapping a picture on his phone that Mat knows will be back to haunt him sooner rather than later.

When Tito pulls back, he’s pink and smiling, holding the starter up as he says, “Looks like I’ve got a piece of your mom that I can keep with me for—”

“And cut,” Mat says, making a slicing motion in front of his neck. “That’s it, that’s a wrap, that’s all folks!”

—

They’re the last ones out of the office that night, messing around with the new dehydrator so Tito can make black garlic, but give up halfway through the instruction manual in favor of getting a little sloshed. They break out the plastic cups and the fancy French wine because fuck it, they got shit to celebrate, ending up in Anders’ office watching the sun go down over the bridge.

“This view is so crazy,” Tito says. “You can literally see everything.”

“Oh yeah.” Mat cranes his neck, pretending to squint out into the distance. “There’s the guy who tried beat me with a xylophone on the L last week.”

“I’ll take a xylophone over pee any day.” 

Mat raises his drink. “I’ll cheers to that.”

They tap solo cups, the sun dipping lower in the sky. Somewhere behind them, Casey’s still in the office, laughing on the phone, computer churning out a playlist of oldies Mat half-recognizes. He could probably name them, if he could focus on anything other than the dark crushed berry color staining Tito’s lips.

“But like,” Tito motions through the air with his free hand. “I meant being here, working here...it’s so weird. I was still a line cook in the fucking Times Square TGIFriday’s when I started as Leo’s assistant. I never even went to culinary school, you know, and then you came in out of nowhere and pulled me into that first video…”

Mat remembers. He can’t not remember.

“Then Anders wanted me on camera more, and suddenly it was like,” Tito laughs, small and jagged as he rubs a hand down his face. “I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Mat stares, his eyes burning. “I don’t—I have no fucking clue what I’m doing, either. Like, ever. At all.”

Tito looks up, startled. “Yes you do.”

“Uh, no.” Mat’s face screws up. “I don’t. I think I would know.”

“Dude, you’re like—” Tito makes a big, looping hand gesture in lieu of a word. “You trained in France. You worked in fancy restaurants. Like, you belong here.”

“So do you,” Mat says, so sudden and so fierce his wine sloshes over the side of his cup and onto the carpet. “You belong here, too.”

Tito holds his gaze for a beat, cheeks turning that deep, splotchy pink before he looks away, a slant of heavy yellow sunlight cutting across his face, catching in his eyelashes. Mat stares, trying to grasp onto some wisp of a thought that might eventually form itself into words, but nothing is coming. Nothing he can say out loud, at least.

Tito down the rest of his cup, throat bobbing before he lets out a sigh, relaxing into something familiar and easy. “Yo, I’m starving.” 

Mat shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Maybe we could go to Chez Tito’s?”

“Man, you know how hard it is to get a reservation there.”

“But it’s my favorite,” Mat says, maybe a little too sincere, a little too earnest.

Tito’s mouth pinches, trying to hold back a smile, but it blooms brightly anyway. “Well, luckily, I know a guy.”

—

Then the video comes out.

Mat doesn’t even know it’s up, enjoying his Saturday lazing about on the couch, thinking about answering emails or going to the gym while fully aware he’s definitely not doing either of those things, when his phone starts buzzing on the coffee table. He grunts, rolling onto his side and craning his neck to see Zeerker’s name lighting up the screen. He thinks about ignoring it, but hey, maybe he’ll come over and bring Mat a latte or something.

Mat picks up. “Yo.”

“It’s not that bad,” Casey says, in a tone that tells Mat that whatever he’s talking about is exactly that bad, probably worse.

“Uh.” Mat furrows his brow at the muted TV, some weird flashy reality show on screen. “What?”

There’s a heavy pause, then, “You haven’t seen it yet.”

“Seen wh—” Mat cuts himself off, springing to his feet. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.”

“It’s not that bad!” Casey shouts over him, “I swear!”

—

It’s that bad. _It’s that bad._

It’s so bad that even heavily edited (Mat makes a mental note to send Devon a fruit basket or something), it’s still so obvious. It’s so obvious that there’s no way Tito doesn’t see the way Mat just stares at him for the entire _thirty-seven minute run time,_ the way he full belly laughs at everything Tito says or does, always smiling, always looking, always reaching.

“What do you mean it has to be seam side up!” Tito shouts on screen, trying to pick the dough back up form it’s basket. “Oh no, oh _BLEEP_—Barz, Barz, what do I do?”

In the video, Mat’s laughing too hard to answer. Even now, sprawled out in bed, pajamas unwashed and hair greasy, Mat can’t help but smile a little. It wanes as he watches this spring loaded, too eager version of himself pulling Tito’s hands away, holding on for a fraction too long. 

And the comments. Jesus, the comments.

It’s the normal fanfare of intensely thirsty shit and adoration, cut with stilted words and the occasional asshole or nonsensical somethingorother as he scrolls deeper and deeper. The top comment, though, is _find someone who looks at you the same way mat looks at tito._ It has thousands of likes. Mat deletes every social media app off his phone, and calls out Monday.

—

He can’t just...not ever go into work again, so he spends Tuesday on a laptop out of the production room editing blogs and answering emails, bribing interns with Metro cards for cups of coffee from the kitchen. He’s almost home free, winding down to 5 o’clock when Anders grabs him and drags Mat into his office. Mat clunks down into the Ebs’ seat when Anders motions to it, their shared office a stark contrast with Anders’ offensively neat desk decorated with framed photos from his wedding, while Ebs’ is a black hole of papers, half eaten snacks, and four VHS copies of _Baby Geniuses_ with Ebs’ cutout face taped onto each cover.

“Congratulations,” is the first thing Anders says, leaning back in his chair, and Mat does a mental doubletake. “The video came out great.”

“Oh,” Mat stammers, sitting on the edge of his seat, spine ramrod straight. “Uh, thanks. Yeah, it did. The crew did a really good job.”

“It’s easily generating the most interaction out of anything else we’ve put up this month—hell, this quarter,” Anders goes on, reaching for his mug. “I know how much it took for you to get here. I mean, when you first started, you were so self-conscious, y’know? It’s just...really good to see you come into your own.”

Mat’s cheeks heat. “Thanks. Thank you.”

“Which is why,” Anders leans back in his chair. “I wanted to ask if you’d consider going with Tito and Ebs to film on location on Friday.”

“On Friday,” Mat echoes. He can’t feel his fingertips.

“I know it’s tight, with the schedule,” Anders says. “And last minute, but they’re heading out to spend a morning with some local fishermen. We’re really trying to highlight local sustainability, and Butch is great—you’ll love him, and Brendan, and their whole crew.”

“I mean, it’s really Tito’s thing,” the words bubble up, too excited at the idea of an excuse, any excuse, to be stamped down. “I don’t want to muscle in on his thing—”

“We’re a team here, Mat,” Anders cuts him off. “We do things together, we work together. Tito knows that.”

Mat’s mouth opens and shuts, trying to mechanically find something to say, but the words won’t come out.

“Unless,” Anders says slowly, leaning in, “You don’t want to do it.”

“I—” he does though. That’s the sick part. Even after everything, after putting all his feelings up like a flashing neon sign for the whole world to see, even when those feelings burrow deeper and deeper inside him, twisting and aching and constant...he still just wants to be around Tito. To see him, all of him, even if it’s just for a moment. He licks at his lips, chapped and useless, and finally gets out, “Can I think about it?”

—

They take two vans, Ebs picking him up outside his apartment when the sky is still dark, which is great, because Ebs is one of those people who truly enjoys peace and quiet and would never try to pry into Mat’s personal life before the sun is even up—

“So,” Ebs says, “you done avoiding Tito yet?”

“Dude,” Mat croaks. “It’s not even 5am. We’re on the LIE. Could you fucking not?”

“Alright,” Ebs says, reaching for the radio. “Just saying.”

Mat exhales through his nose, stuffing his hands into his hoodie pockets and shuffling down in the passenger’s seat lower and lower. He spends the next two hours dozing in and out consciousness, jerked awake by craters disguised as potholes and particularly loud parts of Ebs’ weird true crime podcasts. When the van pulls into a parking lot that’s dissolved into mostly gravel, Mat sits up groggily, wincing against the light that’s spilled out over a sky Mat’s pretty sure had been pitch black just a flew blinks ago.

It’s a painfully bright morning on the Long Island Sound, and whatever effort Mat had put into his outfit that morning (more than he’d like to admit) gets replaced by big rubber boots, waders, and a neon orange poncho. The wind coming up off the water wrecks his hair, and he has to tie what he can back with a rubber band he knows is going to hurt like hell when it pulls it out later.

Scotty snaps a pic of him, and Mat scowls. “You’re about to record extended video of me in this outfit for the rest of the day, and you needed to take a picture?”

Scotty shrugs, pocketing his phone. “For the scrapbook.”

“Scrapbook?” Mat stresses as Ledds clips his mic on, and before he can get a straight answer out of anyone they’re being ushered onto the boat. Mat inhales, long and deep as a cool early morning breeze pushes against him, filling him with a sheer, quiet okayness. Looking out over the water, pockets of light catch across the surface in a pink that dapples into miles of blue, all anchored by a bright, bleeding sun.

That’s when he sees Tito.

It’s the first time Mat has actually looked at him in days; any time he’s been in the same room as Tito, he’s managed to duck out or pretend to be in a conversation with someone else (and there might have been an instance where he hid behind Tom in the lobby Wednesday morning). But there he is, standing at the front of the boat with the captain, listening and smiling against what looks like the edge of the world.

“Alright,” Ebs says with a clap, startling Mat out of his thoughts. “Let’s get a move on! Scott, are we all set up?”

Mat shuffles his way further out onto the boat, unsure how close he should get. He and Tito haven’t even made eye contact yet, something he’s dreading but still desperate for, watching Tito smooth out the front of his own bright blue poncho. 

“And we’re rolling in three, two…” Ebs gives the cue, Scotty gives a thumbs up, and they’re off.

“Wait, we gotta do the scene from _Titanic,”_ Tito says, flapping his arms at the very tip of the bow. “We gotta get some like, real somber flute music, I’ll grab onto Ledds from behind, someone’ll get drawn like a French girl...wait fuck, am _I_ the French girl?”

“How about we try actually talking about where we are and what we’re doing,” Ebs notes, flat and unimpressed. 

Tito waves a dismissive hand. “Nah, too easy. We gotta keep some of the mystery alive, keep ‘em guessing, maybe throw in a murder or two.”

“At least stop shouting,” Ebs sighs, rubbing at his scruff. “You’re voice is gonna scare off all the fish.”

“Your _face_ is gonna scare off all the fish.”

Ebs heaves an expectant look over at Mat. “Do something about him? Please?”

Mat holds up his hands in surrender. 

“At least get in frame,” Ebs shoves, and suddenly Mat is three feet away from Tito, even if it feels like they’re still an ocean apart. At least Tito, for once, looks just as lost as Mat feels, standing wordless in front of him in the dumbest looking bucket hat Mat has ever seen.

The rubberband holding his hair back snaps, springing off somewhere behind Ledds, the space that would usually be filled with booming laughter is empty. Ebs clears his throat. “Let’s, uh, take it from the top.”

—

He and Tito orbit around one another like looping moons, talking to the camera instead of to each other, never getting too close. It helps that they have to actually, y’know, _fish._ Mat had this weird secret fear that somehow they wouldn’t catch anything, and that the whole slog out east and painfully awkward eight hour shoot would all be for nothing—but fluke are practically flying into his arms.

“You sure you’ve never done this before?” Butch laughs, disbelieving as Mat reels in a big striped bass. His shirt is soaked through after chucking the poncho, hair plastered to his face no matter how many times he tries to slick it back, tongue taught against his bottom lip.

“No, he’s just good at everything he does,” he can hear the eye-roll in Tito’s voice as he nets the fish, hauling it up onto the boat. 

Mat opens his mouth to snap something back, when a spout of water shoots up into the air. He grips at the shoulder of Tito’s shirt, yanking and yelling, “Holy shit, is that a whale?!”

Scotty whips the camera around, just in time to catch an honest to god whale breaching the surface of the water in a big, powerful glide. As it arches through the air, Mat’s not sure he’s even breathing, leaning as far over the railing as he can without tipping overboard. The only thing he can over everyone’s excitement is Tito’s quiet, _“Oh my god.”_

“A bit late in the season,” Butch’s first mate Brendan tells them. “But there are humpback whales all around Long Island. Whales, dolphins, sharks, seals…”

“Um.”

Mat doesn’t realize he hasn’t let go of Tito’s shirt until their eyes connect, and he pulls back immediately, hand hovering in the air, caught. Beneath them, the boat rocks with the force of the waves, flash of a tail’s white underside waving goodbye as it sinks down underneath the surface.

Tito rights himself, slipping back into an easy posture with a big smile as he asks Brendan, “Ever see any narwhals?” 

“Bud.” Ebs shoots him a look. “Narwhals aren’t real.”

“Uh, they absolutely fucking are, Ebs.”

—

By the time they get back to their hotel, Mat’s so drained he doesn’t even stop to think about the rooming situation until Ebs hands him a keycard and basically sprints in the opposite direction, leaving him and Tito standing in the sterile lobby, uncomfortably damp and reeking of raw fish. Mat looks at the card, then at Tito, then back again. “Uh.”

Tito looks at him, sighs, and snatches the keycard before heading towards the elevators without a word.

There’s only one bed, because of course there’s only one bed. Mat watches Tito flop back onto the acrylic duvet with a grunt, rumpled and flushed against the staunch shades of taupe that mute the entire room. Mat swallows—he should say something. Anything. He should slide into bed and fit himself against the color and warmth radiating off of Tito and say sorry in the breaths between twisted sheets. 

Instead, he slips back into the bathroom and loses track of time as it runs across slick tiles and down the drain.

—

“It’s uh,” Mat says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the shower, “All yours.”

Tito doesn’t look up from where he’s flipping through the travel brochures on the nightstand, glossy faces gleaming up at him from the unfolded pages. He makes no move to get up, no indication that he even heard Mat, just sitting on the bed in the same clothes he wore under his waders, sweating all day and wrestling with slimy, smelly seafood. Mat’s jaw ticks.

“Maybe you should…” he tries, keeping his voice even, “I mean, we were out all day. You’d probably feel better after a shower or something.”

Tito turns a page. “Don’t feel like it.”

He brings his feet up and lazily kicks off his shoes one at a time, holey socks with brown soles up on the comforter as Tito reclines back fully into the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed.

“It—you—” he tries, flailing for the words. The only ones that want to come out are directly confrontational, and Mat’s trying his hardest to steer around them, dangerously close to veering off a cliff. Tito wiggles back into the pillows farther, and Mat plummets. “Yo, what is your _problem?”_

_“My_ problem?” Tito seethes, whipping a pillow at Mat and missing by a mile. “What the fuck is _your_ problem?”

“You haven’t even—” Mat tries, but saying something like _you haven’t even looked at me all day_ isn’t going to come out in anything other than a whine. “Just take a fucking shower, Tito.”

Blue eyes narrow. “Make me.”

Mat sucks at his teeth, bobbing his head as everything from his whirlwind thoughts to his pounding heart simmers. He walks over to the edge of the bed, snakes arms around Tito’s waist.

“The fuck’re you—”

—and hauls him up over his shoulder.

There’s a shriek, yelling, thrashing, but Mat’s running on pure adrenaline and spite, carrying Tito through the still steamed over bathroom and shoving him into the shower stall, yanking the handle. Tito splutters, rivulets steaming down an openly shocked face, cheeks deep pink and mouth gaping as he blinks through the water.

Ebs busts through the door. “Are you guys o—”

Mat, through the water running down his face, looks at Ebs, then looks at Tito, who’s looking back at him with his hair plastered to his forehead, the two of them still dressed in now soaked through clothes. Tito’s eyes wedge, lips curling in to try and pinch back a smile, but the loud snort he makes gives it away. That’s all it takes, and suddenly they’re both cackling, laughter booming against the tiles as they collapse into each other. Mat barely hears Ebs’, “uh, okay…” drowned out by the rush of water and laughter turning raw and breathless.

—

They’re both wired awake, and starving, so instead of ordering room service and passing out like everyone else, they hijack the van and drive to some roadside diner that’s open all night, and they order everything.

“So it’s poutine.”

“No,” Mat says, rolling his eyes. “It’s not cheese curds, it’s mozzarella.”

“...so it’s really shitty poutine.”

Mat rolls his eyes, pushing the plate of disco fries over. “Just fucking eat it, man.”

Tito, for all his bitching, eats most of it, and keeps trying to steal bites of Mat’s falafel platter as Mat turns the menu over in his hands in silent, abject horror, because there’s just _so much._ Mediterranean and American and Italian and Mexican and Chinese and Indian. There’s even a small sushi section tucked away between seafood and the fifteen different kinds of milkshakes they offer. It’s pure, hedonistic excess, rolled out under the reach of flickering neon coming in from the stretch of windows, across the yellowing formica tabletop, between cracked vinyl booths and two open mouthed, drooling idiots.

Mat looks up. Tito’s hair has dried all weird from the shower, half against his forehead and the other sprung up in curling cowlicks, his cheeks splotched deep pink from the wine he’s been sipping (because _of course_ this place sells booze, too). Mat feels like he’s about to come out of his skin, ribs squeezing so tight they should suffocate his subwoofer heartbeat, but no, he can feel it throbbing down to his fingertips.

“So I guess you’re not ignoring me anymore,” Tito says, messing with the packets of Sweet’N Low.

“I wasn’t—” Mat tries, but Tito’s glare cuts him off, and he sighs. “I just figured...it was easier. Dude, I don’t know.”

He’s not sure what Tito would’ve done—if he would’ve tried to talk about it with Mat, let him down gently (horrifying), or if he would’ve just acted like it never happened (somehow even more horrifying). Mat pushes the rice around on his plate, his former black hole of a stomach spooled too tightly now to eat another bite. He can’t look up.

“I get that you...” Tito starts, “you didn’t want to deal with it, but. Like, do you know how that felt? For me? It was like out of nowhere my best friend was ignoring me, and all I could think about was what I did wrong.”

Mat forces himself to lift his head, to look at Tito, hunched and drawn tightly into himself against the corner of the booth. He’s never seen Tito look so small.

“I’m sorry,” Mat rasps. “It was just the video made it so obvious—”

Tito stabs at his pasta, snapping, “Oh wow, so sorry, man. It must’ve been _so hard_ for you to watch that.”

Mat blinks, frowning at the edge in Tito’s voice. “I—” 

“Lemme get some of these plates out of your way,” their waitress swoops in, the plastic name tag reading Nancy in a looping cursive font. “Anything else I can get for you?” 

“Thank you—no, we’re good for right now, thank you.” Tito smiles at her, the pinch in his expression melting to match his honeyed voice. 

“Nothing? Coffee, dessert?” she says coffee like _caw-fee,_ which Mat will never get over, no matter how long he lives on this island. “We got Bailey’s.”

“Um,” Tito tilts his head, considering. “Maybe a cup of coffee?”

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Maybe?”

“Definitely,” Tito amends, smile turning a little shy.

“And you, hun?” she asks, and it takes Mat a second to realize she’s talking to him. 

“Uh,” he scrambles, “same. Could we get them in to-go cups?”

She shoots him a sharp look. “You can only get a large in to-go cup.”

“That’s fine.”

She heads off with a swoosh of her apron, leaving them in their cramped booth, silent, the severed end of the conversation bleeding between them. Mat’s thoughts won’t steady themselves, shooting off in too many directions all at once, fracturing, splintering, and Tito won’t look at him. He’s just staring out the window, the blue and red neon melting into a purple that curves over the delicate lines of his face, the sweetness of his cheeks, the fullness of his mouth. Mat swallows around the heart lodged into the back of his throat.

“Two coffees in to-go cups,” the waitress says, setting them down. “Anything else, boys?”

_Everything,_ Mat thinks, but he only says, “Just the check, please.”

—

The parking lot is cool, the first reaches of fall slipping across the cracked asphalt,the smell of briney, damp sea water seeping into their clothes. The entire strip lining the side of the road is empty save for a couple cars parked towards the back as slide open the van’s side door and sit on the edge, sipping their coffee.

“This,” Tito says, “is literally tar.”

Mat peers down the opening in the plastic lid. “I kinda like it.”

A snort. “You would.”

Mat tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear, grinning to himself as his shoulder bumps Tito’s. It’s quiet. It’s never quiet like this in the city. Never this still. Mat breathes in and lets it fill him, just for a moment. “I’m sorry shit got so weird.”

Tito pushes out a noisy breath, cheeks puffing as his lips try to keep shut before he rubs at the back of his neck. “Barz, c’mon, we really gotta do this now?”

“Then when?”

Tito’s silent for a moment, bringing the coffee to his lips, but never sipping. “I don’t wanna like, wake up tomorrow and you’re ignoring me again.” A pause. “Plus, we’ve been not talking about it for like two years, so. It’s not like it’s hard.”

Mat licks his lips, mouth dry. “You’ve uh, known that long, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tito says, jagged. “I’ve known that long.”

It hooks deep between Mat’s ribs and yanks. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Tito shakes his head, flicking the plastic tab on the to-go cup’s lid. “It’s not your fault.”

“I just don’t want you to like,” Mat struggles, “be uncomfortable, I guess.”

“I’m not,” Tito tells him, and then when Mat meets his gaze he winces. “Maybe a little, but that’s not...that’s me. That’s my fucking issue. I gotta deal with it.”

“Sorry,” Mat says again, because he can’t help it.

Tito’s voice tightens, “Please stop saying sorry.”

Mat’s mouth clicks shut and he faces forward. His coffee’s almost gone, and once it is he’s going to have nothing to fiddle with, to occupy his mouth with, and he’s afraid the apologies are just going to keep spilling out without it.

“Can I ask you something?” Mat sighs, because fuck it, if he’s going to self-flagellate himself in a parking lot next to a dog grooming place called Central Bark, he might as well lean in all the way. Tito hums, taking a sip of his coffee, and Mat swallows, watching him. “When did you figure it out?”

Tito freezes, unblinking. “Barz—”

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” Mat rushes to say. “I was just wondering, and like...I don’t know. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

Mat watches Tito grip at his cup, fingers pressing into the paper enough to dent the sides. “I—it wasn’t—I don’t know, dude, it wasn’t like one specific thing.”

Great, so Mat was just embarrassingly obvious all the time. Perfect. “You said it’s been two years, so I was just...wondering, I guess.”

Tito makes a sound in the back of his throat, something that would’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t gotten so mangled on the way out. Mat watches his throat bob as he swallows slowly, eyes reopening. 

“It was,” he says, soft, “the Caramilk video. I was so fucking sick and miserable that whole week, and I was burnt out from filming every day, and I missed home so badly, and the only real thing I had to look forward to were those fucking Caramilk bars." 

Tito puts his coffee down, rubbing at his eyes in slow, hard circles. “And then I missed the last day of shooting, and I was so fucking sad. Just at my breaking point, in my shitty apartment, alone...when there was this knock on my door, and you were _there,_ holding a big box of homemade chocolate bars. We hadn’t even really hung out outside of work yet, I don’t think, but you—and I just—” Tito puts his hands down, finally looking up, smile soft. “I knew.”

Mat stares. He stares, his heart throbbing inside his chest, caught between tearing through his ribs and just stopping completely. Maybe it’s the crisp clarity of the outside air, or the exhaustion from so many days of knotting every thought into a parody of itself, so bruised and twisted they became unrecognizable. But he sees so clearly in his mind what will happen if he lets this go. He sees how they’ll fall back into place, so seamlessly it’ll be like nothing ever happened. How they’ll be friends. They’ll never not be friends—Mat knows he wouldn’t trade even half a memory he shares with Tito for anything else in the world. Knows Tito wouldn’t, either. 

This thing, though. This huge swell of affection and trust and yearning, carved out in hundreds of cups of coffee, beers on the patio, late night neon diners and long, long car trips up to Montreal. The way Tito folded Mat into himself when Mat’s mom was in the hospital for emergency surgery and he couldn’t fly home to see her last year. The way Tito wouldn’t look at Mat in the office when he said he didn’t know what he was doing, the sunlight caught in his eyelashes. Mat feels it all, every piece of it, and it’s not going anywhere, as if there’s any place big enough to hold it all.

Cool air pushes against Mat’s flushed face, heart hammering, and words come out, carefully falling into place one after the other, like they’ve been waiting for him to find them. “I don’t think we’re having the same conversation.”

Tito’s face pinches. “What?”

Mat moves to put his cup down on the edge of the open van, but misses, cup hitting the ground and the last dregs of coffee splattering across the pavement as his hands come up and cup Tito’s face, hot to the touch. Blue eyes flicker down, up, down again as Mat tilts his head and presses in close, a breath of the question answered by Tito grabbing the front of Mat’s shirt, holding tight. When Mat kisses him, it’s soft, as soft as he can stand it, and when Tito kisses back, Mat can’t tell where aching ends and electricity begins. Can’t do anything except kiss and be kissed, pressing and parting with a sway so gentle it barely makes a sound, until Tito pulls him close by the hand fisted in his t-shirt, blooming open against Mat’s mouth with a gasp that sucks all the air out of Mat’s lungs.

Mat feels hands push into his hair, threading through and messing it up, pulling just enough to tilt Mat’s head back, something between a breath and a whimper escaping him. The slow, hot slide of tongue, his hands on Tito’s waist, fingers fanning out and fitting themselves between ribs, like that’s where they were always meant to be. Careful caution falls away to something near bruising, desperate for any proof that this is real. Mat wants—god, he wants, everything, anything. Every bit lip and choked half-sound, every touch, every push and pull.

“The bank’s got security cameras all over this parking lot, boys.”

Mat jerks back, face on fire as Nancy waltzes past, windmilling her lanyard with her apron stuffed into her (frankly gigantic) purse. When he risks a glance at Tito, he’s hunched with his hands clasped between his knees, deep red face tilted up towards the sky.

Mat’s lips thin into tight, flat line. “Thanks, Nancy.”

“And don’t leave that coffee cup on the ground.”

A sigh. “We won’t, Nancy.”

“Also,” her shoes clack against the pavement, and when Mat looks up, she’s got a blank order pad out, “Could I get a autograph?”

—

When they finally climb into the van, Mat behind the wheel, the silence bleeds between then until Mat finally says, “So. Uh.”

“We are literally,” Tito says slowly, squinting out at the blackness of night, “so dumb.”

Mat’s eyes clench shut. “So, so dumb.”

“Like,” Tito turns in his seat, hands up by his face, jerking in all directions as he speaks. “Why—how—”

“I don’t know!” Mat shouts, flailing back at him. “I have no fucking idea!”

“You were avoiding me,” Tito says, pointed. “You knew how I felt ‘cause of the sourdough video and you literally fucking hid behind Tom so you wouldn’t have to let me down.”

Mat feels like every particle in his brain is exploding. “I was avoiding you because there was no way you didn’t know how _I_ felt. I was so fucking obvious—I full on Swayze’d you when I showed you know to knead the dough, like! I might as well’ve hired a skywriter to spell it out over the East River!”

“Barzy,” Tito breathes out. “Everyone could see me having an internal meltdown on screen when you were behind me—you just looked like it was all normal. And even before that, right after you finished Butterfingers...like, I thought we were just politely ignoring how I almost kissed you.”

Mat balks, “You almost kissed me?”

“Oh my—” Tito rolls his eyes, his entire body rolling with them before he bulges, _“Yes.”_

Mat’s jaw hangs there for a second as he looks out the windshield, blinking rapidly as he shoves a hand through his hair. “I...really?”

When he looks back, Tito’s shoulders are shaking with laughter, eyes wedged with slices of light cutting through them, cheeks that pink again, so deep, and Mat wants to see how far down it goes. Right now, though, he can’t do anything except lean over the gearshift and kiss Tito, can’t help but hum contentedly as fingers curl around the back of his neck and keep him there, no almost about it.

—

“No. No, absolutely not.”

“You have to,” Mat singsongs, elbows leaning against the counter as he looks up at Tito. There’s a smear of chocolate across his cheek, plumes of cocoa powder across his ruined apron, drips and splatters running all the way down. “The recipe calls for it. You’re not gonna get that good snap from the coating if you don’t.”

“No,” Tito shakes his head, but he’s barely holding back the smile threatening to overtake his entire face. “I’m not tempering the fucking chocolate. I tried. I tried four times—it’s not setting.”

“Then you gotta do it again. Fifth time’s the charm, I hear.”

“No.” Tito shoves the bowl away. “I refuse to do this shit again. Hershey can suck my dick.”

“Guys,” Ebs sighs, beyond exasperated at this point. “Please. Drop all the f-bombs you want, but you cannot tell the biggest brand name candy company to blow you, Anthony.”

“Yeah, Anthony,” Mat grins up at him, pulling the spatula from the mixing bowl and bringing it to his mouth. “Think of the children—you’re teaching them bad PR.”

Tito lunges. “I’ll show you bad PR—”

Mat jumps out of the way and, unfortunately, into Casey and the giant crate of apples Casey is carrying. They avalanche across the floor, under the feet of a distracted Tito still trying to grab Mat—which he does, just as he trips and flails backwards, yanking Mat down on top of him.

“Holy shit, did we get that?” Ebs’ voice floats in from somewhere above. Mat groans, reaching to get rid of the apple that got wedged right beneath his thigh when he fell. “Scotty, please tell me you got that.”

“Every goddamn second.”

Mat moves to flop over and off when a leg throws itself across his hip, arms wrapping around his shoulders. Mat laughs against Tito’s temple as they roll, granny smiths digging into the small of his back, Tito begging, “If you love me, you’ll do it for me.”

Mat locks his ankles over Tito’s, “Then I guess I don’t love you.”

Tito pushes himself up, hands bracketing the sides of Mat’s burning face. The light from the wall of windows catches in Tito’s hair, wrecked by the backwards hat that got lost somewhere in the fall, and slips across the planes of his face, lighting up a constellation of freckles and full moon eyes. “Then I guess you’re trapped here.”

“Oh my god.”

“Just do it for me—you’re so good at it!”

“Beau,” Mat’s belly hurts from laughing so hard. “We’re on camera, _c’mon.”_

“Nope,” Tito says, leaning all his weight against Mat, solid and real. “I’m not letting you go.”

Mat curls his hands around Tito’s wrists, holding tight. “Me either.”

_end._

**Author's Note:**

> inner goblin: take the already niche thing and set it in an even more niche universe
> 
> me: fine but it’s only gonna be 5k max
> 
> inner goblin: lol sure ok
> 
> thanks for reading :-)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] foolproofed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24318973) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)


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